An app to make air travel both easy, and fun (!) again

Harkening back to a kinder, gentler time when air travel "felt special" and dudes didn't wear tank tops on planes, Flying's a just-dropped iPhone app from a group of Dutch developers who want to "bring back the elegance and panache" of soaring the open skies. How? The app pretty much does two things -- one useful, one social

First, the useful: in an effort to keep you from missing your flight and/or arriving at the airport way too early, Flying tracks everything from your departure & arrival times, to terminals, gate numbers, etc., and updates them all in real-time, right up until the air stewardess stubbornly demands you turn off your phone for take-off

On the fun/social side meanwhile, the app behaves like a sort of electronic passport; it doles out travel stamps for your completed trips, calculates how many miles you've flown in relation to visiting the moon, and shares itineraries on FB/Twitter

It even lets you compete with friends by generating a ranked leader-board based on how much time you spend in the air, showing how you can be both a winner and a loser at the same time.

And now, because moving pictures can be so much more engaging than boring old words (sigh), watch throwback footage of people flying while you learn how the app works.